I was laughing so hard, I almost pissed myself reading the "wanking disasters" one. Dear god.
Thanks for posting this, I needed that.posted by dunkadunc at 1:30 AM on November 25, 2009

Ooooh, b3ta. What an odd way to waste a ton of time. The Q&A with the author commissioned to do the latest Hitchhiker's Guide book was pretty funny.posted by neewom at 1:58 AM on November 25, 2009

Hah, I forgot all about b3ta. Do they still send out the newsletter?posted by cj_ at 1:59 AM on November 25, 2009

These are on the whole almost shockingly well written. God I love vomiting. I haven't thrown up since I was 11 (despite fond wishes to do so at time), so it's a source of endless amusement to me, watching/hearing about it in others.posted by smoke at 2:01 AM on November 25, 2009

I take it back - the wanking stories are terrible. Vomit thread great, though.posted by smoke at 2:45 AM on November 25, 2009

PontifexPrimus, that 'nicest thing' thread is fantastic. Getting misty-eyed at work, so I think I'll leave it for later. Thanks for posting it.posted by slimepuppy at 3:49 AM on November 25, 2009 [1 favorite]

Yeah, that was a scene in Scary Movie 3.posted by cj_ at 4:01 AM on November 25, 2009

cj_ - indeed they do. The feed of their front page images is great, but opening it at work can feel a bit like russian roulette. The work filter blocks the most egregious prictures, but every so often some wanking hamster with hitler's face pops up on my screen (at least, I think that's B3ta related)posted by patricio at 4:07 AM on November 25, 2009

Yeah, that was a scene in Scary Movie 3.

...which confirms my theory that I am, in fact, a 14-year old boy.posted by Ouisch at 4:13 AM on November 25, 2009

Dang, my comment got cut off; here's what was supposed to be in front of the links:
I've been reading b3ta for a couple of years now, and the QsOTW can be really interesting; there's a large variety of posters from all walks of life, so you often get a nicely mixed bag.
There's two annoying things, though: a) The threads are sorted in reverse chronologic order, so when you read starting at the top you'll get replies to postings further down the page and b) some people post long, seemingly on-topic stories just to end with a joke or lame pun.

Other than that, though, the site is quite nice, especially the droll Britishisms that crop up from time to time.posted by PontifexPrimus at 4:25 AM on November 25, 2009

This has been my favourite b3ta answer of the week for a while. It's quite long, but very detailed. In short:

1. A massive database processing same-day trades between banks crashes due to a bonky script.
2. Trades worth $12 trillion are instantly suspended.
3. If they aren't unsuspended in time, the bank would have to pay penalties on every trade.
4. The bank would collapse, taking a fair amount of the euro exchange rate with it.

I keep on meaning to post it on AskMe and see if anyone knows if it could actually be true. Although IT got the system back up and running it still cost the bank in question $100 million in fines. Someone must know...posted by permafrost at 5:08 AM on November 25, 2009 [8 favorites]

Man, that takes me way back! I was reading b3ta around the time of some of those questions - 2005 - before I discovered Metafilter. I kind of forget how I discovered Mefi but I thought it was through b3ta somehow. Woo and yay.posted by yoHighness at 6:11 AM on November 25, 2009

Damn - I totally forgot about b3ta. That, along with memepool were two of my main go-to sites before I started digging deeper into MeFi. Did b3ta go on a hiatus at some point, I'm not sure why I would have pulled it from my daily links unless they stopped updating.posted by Slack-a-gogo at 6:50 AM on November 25, 2009

Is this that mythical ChatFilter place I've heard spoken of in hushed whispers? Have we finally found the Valhalla of the Hypothetical?posted by mccarty.tim at 8:32 AM on November 25, 2009

B3ta hasn't been on any sort of hiatus or anything. The quality keeps on coming in the newsletter, right as rain, every week. I have been getting it since, oooo, 2002 or so I think? 2003? It is, at times, the very highlight of my week and I am not ashamed to admit this.posted by oflinkey at 9:16 AM on November 25, 2009 [1 favorite]

Love the vomit thread for expressions such as "...roared an obscene amount of sick..."posted by hermitosis at 9:57 AM on November 25, 2009

Is this that mythical ChatFilter place I've heard spoken of in hushed whispers? Have we finally found the Valhalla of the Hypothetical?

Will the Hammer of the Gods drive our ships to new lands?
Will we fight the hordes? Sing and/or cry?
Valhalla of the Hypothetical, am I comiiiiiiing?

Oh boy, Led Zep references! That's where I'm a Viking!posted by arto at 10:10 AM on November 25, 2009 [1 favorite]

permafrost: I keep on meaning to post it on AskMe and see if anyone knows if it could actually be true. Although IT got the system back up and running it still cost the bank in question $100 million in fines.

Certainly sounds plausible from an IT perspective. Big IT systems do have a habit of growing in odd and scary ways, and once the original designers have moved on, gone mad or died, keeping it all running rapidly decends into something closely resembling voodoo, incantations and all. (pleasedontbreakpleasedontbreak). The bigger and more it's expected to do, the bigger and nastier it will all go bang when some forgotten bit of glue script chokes on something unexpected. That the change that screwed it propagated to the backup DR system and then borked that too is entirely believable. And given, for example, HBOS and RBS were given a soooper-secret cash bailout of £66 billion last year mere hours before they effectively became insolvent, in addition to the hundreds of billions pumped in the british banking system overall, and the way the banks completely ignored risk if there was money in it...

Pretty much every sysadmin will have a story or two of that one time under pressure they thought "I'll just make this small tweak quickly, won't take a minute. Hmm. That's odd, it's not supposed to do that. Oh Shit. OHHH SHIT oh oh bloody hell, I'm fucked. *phone rings* Yes boss, looks something happened to the storage array. Not sure what went wrong, I'm looking at it now. Yeah, must be a bad disk. Happens sometimes. If I can't fix it quickly, we'll have to go back to backups I'm afraid."

It's a bit like you're not a proper doc till you've accidentally killed a patient, you're not a proper sysadmin until you've accidentally bollixed up the email system. It's a learning experience.posted by ArkhanJG at 10:53 AM on November 25, 2009 [1 favorite]

God. The one about the poor guy who poo'did himself while bench pressing is as horrifying as it is hilarious.posted by tkchrist at 11:54 AM on November 25, 2009

ArkhanJG, reading your comment I instantly flashed back to a terrible and haunting incident in my past life as a sysadmin, and immediately felt a thousand times better about it. Thanks!posted by ErikaB at 12:14 PM on November 25, 2009

All these stories were great, thanks for the post.posted by flatluigi at 12:36 PM on November 25, 2009

My Saturday mornings belong to the b3ta newsletter. This post distracted me long enough that I forgot it was Wednesday for a couple minutes.posted by Heretic at 2:56 PM on November 25, 2009

Oh noes!!!!! Another way for me to lose hours and hours of productivity!

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